Zoom zoom zoom! Make my heart go boom boom! My supernova girl!
We have finally reached the end of our TBT ABCs and there’s nothing I could have chosen for Z other than the 1999 Disney Channel Original Movie Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century. Zenon, a girl of the 21st century, lives on a space station in the year 2049. She gets in trouble and her parents literally ground her by sending her to Earth to stay with her aunt. When she gets there, she has a hard time making friends because the Earth kids all think she’s weird.
But she’s a cute blonde so eventually, a couple guys get over it and befriend her.
Zenon frequently video chats with her best friend on the space station, Nebula (played by Raven-Symone), on what is basically an iPhone with better reception. Our heroine then learns that one of the higher ups on the space station (or “space stay”, as she annoyingly calls it) is trying to destroy the ship with a computer virus. To save the home she loves, she has one of her new Earth friends create an “anti-virus” (not anti-virus software. An anti-virus). Zenon then hitches a ride into space with a rockstar, Proto Zoa, who recognizes Zenon from a “Dance with Proto Zoa” contest she won (which I think means she won a chance to be a video ho but I can’t be sure).
Zenon gets up to the space station, she saves her home with the anti-virus, blah blah blah. It’s a Disney movie, how else do you think it ends?
But instead of flames and hyenas, this movie ends with a rock concert and a bunch of fan girls screaming like hyenas.
This movie was actually created as a failed pilot for a TV series but it did generate two sequels: Zenon: The Zequel and Zenon: Z3. It was also apparently based on a book that shares its name with the first film. In the book, Zenon is sent to Earth to stay with her aunt as she is in the movie, but she then lives on her grandparents’ farm to do chores and learn about the low-tech life. Evidently, Disney thought it would be way better to change the story and do it their way. Instead of learning the value of hard work and other life lessons, Zenon gets a dance party.
Good luck ever getting that song out of your head.
Happy Throwback Thursday!
Emily Regan 